Hi everyone! Welcome to podcast #96! We are talking about marketing strategies and leveraging other people for your marketing. We’ve been experimenting with a few things for a while and thought we’d share some results with you!

What have Andrew McCauley and Heather Porter learnt this week?

Sadly this week, the Sydney siege showed that the gunman there wanted people to leverage social media. Andrew found that surprisingly, people listened to the police, banded together and didn’t share information on media (at least in Australia). It was refreshing that people didn’t go crazy on social media and did the moral right thing.

Heather was checking out skateboarding edits (videos!) which her partner’s kids were watching on the long haul flights between Sydney and London. She noticed that there was a box near the skateboarder’s shoes saying “click here for an interactive experience”. Clicking took her straight to an ecommerce site where the shoes could be purchased! It’s a very innovative way of marketing in something that is not otherwise advertising.

Marketing Strategies – Leveraging other people

What does this mean? It’s about getting your message out to the right people so that it disseminates further. It’s more effective to get 10 of the right people rather than 100 of the wrong people.

Here are some of the strategies we’ve been following that have more than doubled our website traffic!:

1. Finding posts that are already out there that are getting a lot of shares, then making that information better.

2. Long-form blog posts that are structured to get people results. Longer form posts tend to have more structure and heart. They are also more likely to be shared or kept and referred back to. Another point is that you’re more likely to share something you’re really proud of!

3. We are not using automated tools to punch out content. They are not really working anymore! It’s a lot of manual work, but the results are much better.

4. Find the people who have already shared the popular articles on your article subject and reach out to them individually. They will be sharing content relevant to their own followers so are probably more likely to share your article. Not only do we often get our content shared, but we start to build a whole new community, including sharing their content as well.

5. Always keep your ultimate goal in mind and use that as the driving force behind your content. For example, if you don’t want to attract people with the “freebie” mindset, don’t write articles titled “5 Free Tips For X”

What not to do…

1. Email all your LinkedIn contacts inviting them to your events, even when the event is not relevant to that person!